Friday, August 18, 2017

Using film to teach non-US & global legal history

What films (and film clips) do you
use when teaching legal history? This summer, we asked many of you this
question (H/t: Law & History CRN). We received an
avalanche of responses. Here they are, hopefully just in time for your fall
syllabus needs. (Most responders describe films and video clips shown in class,
but some assign videos to be watched in advance.)

For teaching global and non-US
legal history:

Yael Berda: I use the
first episode of Rome to explain Max Weber’s concept of imperium in Roman
law. I show Gandhito talk about perceptions of citizenship and
legal status within the British empire.

Levi Cooper: When teaching Jewish legal history, I
use clips (not full movies), or even just stills from movies to illustrate a
point, start a discussion, pique interest, or as an aide-memoire. For example:

oWhen teaching about the
centrality of dispute and dissent in Jewish law, I start with a clip from Fiddler
on the Roof ("he's right and he's right, they can't both be
right...")

oWhen teaching about the
reaches of Jewish law as a religious legal system that is not based on political
borders, I show a clip from The Martian ("Mark Watney, space
pirate").

oI open my class on the
minority opinions in Jewish law with a still from Minority Report.

More after the jump.

Rohit De: I've been using a few films for my “Lawyers as
Rebels” class which work well:

oOn WWII and international criminal law:

1. Judgment at Nuremberg
by Stanley Kramer. It's
a little long and would also work well with clips. It's a Hollywood big budget
film around the trial of judges who served under the Nazi regime. The key
question is one of the inner morality of law.

2. Tokyo Trial(this is a four-part series on Netflix produced
by a Dutch company) which focuses on the judges on the Tokyo tribunal,
particularly the Dutch and Indian judge who both dissented. Episodes 2 and 3
(both around 35 minutes) work well for a class.

oOn Colonialism:

1. There are a number of short clips from Attenborough’s Gandhithat work, like the great trial scene where he pleads guilty to sedition and his burning of ID cards in South Africa;

Jim Jaffe: I like teaching with The Return of
Martin Guerre (popular, but lays out the legal structure of early modern
France very well). I also use the original film used in the Nuremburg trials
(Nazi War Crimes Trial? From the National Archives), which, it is claimed, was
the first time film was used as evidence in a trial. The fact that it doesn’t
mention the Holocaust or single out the Jews as victims also makes it
interesting. Also, it can lead to an interesting discussion about the
inclusion/exclusion/verification of testimony and witnessing. In my British
history class, I always showed A Royal Scandal – incredibly funny and
witty BBC production of the prosecution of “Queen” Caroline of Brunswick, wife
of the future George IV. Through all the antics, intentionally reminiscent of
Charles and Diana, it’s a nice story of how to try a member of the royal family
before the House of Lords.

Fred Konefsky: A very interesting Chinese film is the The Story of Qiu Ju(based on a Chinese novella), set in China probably in the 1980s, which raises
all sorts of issues about the nature of justice, and starkly sets up the clash
between life in Chinese villages and its notions of justice and expectations
about the legal system, and the more centralized and bureaucratic state legal
apparatus. The cultural clashes are quite strikingly detailed, though one
can make the argument that the themes are universal. I occasionally used
the film to get US law students away from assumption that thinking about
law is restricted to the American landscape.

Assaf Likhovski: I use a documentary film called Killing Kasztner in my Israeli legal history class. It deals
with the trial and assassination of a Hungarian Jewish lawyer who was accused
of collaborating with the Nazis. It raises interesting questions about the
ability of the legal process to discover and judge the past, and the
relationship of law and memory.

Michelle McKinley: Sisters in Law is AMAZING. I use it for
human rights as the last class. It completely lays the white savior narrative to rest.

Siobhan Mukerji: When I was in college at Duke I watched a
few films in Edward Balleisen's "The Rule of Law in World History"
class. I thought they worked well: The Story of Qiu Ju (China, 1992), Breaker
Morant (Australia 1980).

Intisar Rabb: I have
used The Message (1976, available online).

Kalyani Ramnath: Not
so much legal history, as much legal concepts, but I like Court (dir.
Chaitanya Tamhane, 2014) and Oh my God (dir. Umesh Shukla, 2012), both
of which are about ordinary people confronting the idiosyncrasies of law. I also like Deepa
Dhanraj's documentaries, especially the biopic of K.G. Kannabiran, the lawyer. On
the Babri Masjid demolition: "I live in Behrampada" (1993) by Madhushree Datta.

David Schorr: For English legal
history I have used Billy Wilder's (and Agatha Christie's) Witness
For the Prosecution to highlight some aspects of English
procedure with historical roots. The last couple of years I have switched to
the first episode of the BBC drama Garrow's Law, which does a good job
of showing the transition to adversarial trial with counsel and some of its
historical causes (the full episode's on Vimeo).

Mitra Sharafi: When I taught my undergrad Legal Studies
course, “Law
and Colonialism,” I used Gandhion the role of colonized lawyers
leading independence movements in the British Empire (opening assassination and
funerary procession scene along with the following scene where Gandhi is thrown off a South
African train as a young barrister). I also showed the courtroom scene from Passage
to Indiawhich is about a a sexual assault case (an Indian man accused of attacking
a British woman), the malleability of memory, and the notion of racial “honor”
in a colonial context. My undergraduate Legal Studies course “Legal
Pluralism” involves some legal history. I begin the course by showing Courts and Councils: Dispute Settlement in India(1981), a 30-minute documentary produced by the University of
Wisconsin’s Center for South Asia. It is hard to find; I think it is only available by purchase here. It does a great job of showing the many layers of dispute resolution in India--from the Nandiwala bull-trading community's panchayat (community council) to the state courts, and occasionally with some historical context.(I post my syllabi here.)

Plus some relevant reading:

Jackie Gullard: Steve
Greenfield, Guy Osborn and Peter Robson's Film and the Law (Hart, 2010) will throw up lots of possible
titles for you, from a British angle.

And this tip:

Susanna Blumenthal: Kanopywhich is available to faculty and students at Minnesota and I suspect at many other institutions (and public libraries), has really revolutionized my thinking about the place of film in my teaching (both of law and history!).

Thanks
to everyone who contributed! If you have other recommendations, we’d love to
know.